


all the people in those old photographs i've seen (are dead)

by orphan_account



Category: Ib (Video Game)
Genre: (but i read it as nb so), (kinda?? that quote abt garry can be interpreted as either nb or gnc depending on how u read it), Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bad Ending, Canon Non-Binary Character, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Fire, Forgotten Portrait, Garry (Ib)-centric, Ghosts, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Mild Blood, NO Mary bashing, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Queer Themes, Short One Shot, Spoilers, forgotten portrait ending, in a non-literal sense, they're very subtle and implied but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-26 23:42:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21109106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ib comes back to the gallery every other week, on a Wednesday. She stands in the middle of the corridor, a good foot or two from his portrait, and stares with those big ruby eyes. There’s something haunting about them, some unreadable mesh of fear and hope that digs under Garry’s skin and turns his blood cold.





	all the people in those old photographs i've seen (are dead)

**Author's Note:**

> SO i got catapulted back into the ib fandom after 4-5 years. woohoo!!  
the forgotten portrait ending still absolutely breaks my heart, so this happened. whoops. i have to do my science homework now lmao
> 
> quick notes:  
\- title is from "the kids aren't alright" by fall out boy  
\- garry is nb in this fic!! it isn't directly mentioned, but i came across those quotes about him not caring abt the gender binary/originally using she/her pronouns in the game, so. he's nb (which ngl kicked my genderfluid ass into loving this game again)! he uses he/she in this fic! i stuck to he to avoid confusing anything but yeah bvhjchbcj  
\- no mary-bashing is involved!! she's referred to vaguely a few times but it's in more of a sad betrayed way than a hateful way. garry's got too much love in his big dumb heart to be mad at a child for too long, even if she is a meanie.  
\- the word queer is used 1 (one) time, but it's garry using it and it's only referring to himself, so.

Reality is made of such fickle things.

Garry has always known this to some degree; he’s always understood that the world is made of both the material and the abstract, and that blood runs thicker in some veins than others. He’s always known that nothing is truly black and white, that nobody is fully good or bad, and that the things he clings to can be pulled from beneath his feet without so much as a blink.

He knows it better, now that he himself has become the abstract.

That’s not to say that Garry had ever been usual - he took pride in being distinctly _unusual_. He was tall and lanky and pale, all shades of purples and blues, a soft wispy rasp in the back of his throat, unusual and abnormal and _queer_. If he was ashamed of his differences, then he was granting them power; if he took them in stride, loved them, pushed them to the forefront, then they were his weapons to bare.

And yet all of that - puffs of smoke through pursed lips, purple hair-dye, blue roses, rainbow lights - was nothing in comparison to the feeling of canvas and paint where he had once been human.

* * *

The thing about paintings is that they are objectively perfect, and beautiful in inhuman ways. Mary had been the perfect little girl, with sapphire-blue eyes and golden ringlets, a cheery smile and a melodic voice - and so Garry _should_, by all logic, be perfect, now that he’s trapped behind glass and frame.

He looks the same as ever, in the darkness of the fake world; but he’s smart enough to snag glances of his own portrait in mirrors whenever it’s moved around the gallery, and the stark difference between himself and the ethereal, angelic man in the portrait causes a deep discomfort to roll in his gut.

The man in the portrait has the same slumped posture, the same messy hair, the same speckles of blackened blood where rose-thorns stick into his skin - and yet his body is devoid of any of Garry’s sparse smattering of freckles, painted milky-white and smooth. His eyes are wrong - too big, too bright, making his blackish-brown irises look dull and average. His clothes don’t quite fold the same way, painted at more flattering angles (as if being _slumped half-dead against a wall_ could ever truly be flattering), and the smudges of eyeliner running down Garry’s cheeks are nowhere to be seen.

He’s uncomfortable, staring at that face that isn’t quite his - but there’s something oddly comforting about the disconnect, as if he has some kind of plausible deniability that it was ever meant to be his.

* * *

Ib comes back to the gallery every other week, on a Wednesday. She stands in the middle of the corridor, a good foot or two from his portrait, and stares with those big ruby eyes. There’s something haunting about them, some unreadable mesh of fear and hope that digs under Garry’s skin and turns his blood cold.

The first few times she’d came, he’d tried to talk to her. “Ib!” he’d cried, voice hoarse and low from disuse, cracking and groaning as if he’d never spoken before. “Ib, it’s _me,_ remember?_ Ib!”_

Something almost like recognition had flashed in her eyes, just for a moment - and then somebody had walked between them, oblivious, and it was gone.

He tried to cry once she’d left, but ink runs slower than tears ever had.

* * *

The portrait ladies unsettle him. He always finds himself winding his fist tighter around his rose when they arrive, as if it isn’t coiled around him and attached to his very being, as if he has the strength to pull away from the wall and go running. Their eyes always dart quickly to his clenched fist, but they never say a word.

They know he won’t reply, anyway. He only uses his voice to yell for Ib, nowadays, and it isn’t as if that works.

The ladies in red dab at the bigger smudges of blood with little silk handkerchiefs, mumbling gentle assurances whenever he flinches; the ladies in blue run their long, thin fingers through his hair, twisting each curl around their fingers individually; the ladies in green sprinkle the barest droplets of water on his rose, although it is no longer truly alive; and the ladies in yellow will sit and smile and tell him, quietly, that they care for him.

They had lost Mary, their littlest sister, but had welcomed their new brother with open arms regardless, always eager to pretend they’re a real family, even if he flinches when they get too close, and even if none of them can truly call themselves _human_ anymore.

(He wonders, distantly, if they’d still love him so gently if they knew it was his lighter that set Mary ablaze, clutched in Ib’s shaking fist.)


End file.
